By noon on Tuesday, Jan. 3, the highest-paid chief executives officers in Canada will have earned as much as the average Canadian makes in an entire year, according to a new report.

The top 100 Canadian CEOs were paid an average of $8.4 million in 2010, a 27 per cent increase over the previous year, the report published Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says.

In comparison, the average Canadian earned $44,366 that year, or 1.1 per cent more than in 2009, the report called Canada’s CEO Elite 100 notes.

“The conclusion from these data is inescapable,” says the report written by Hugh MacKenzie, an economist with the Ottawa-based non-profit research organization. “Soaring executive salaries have played a significant role in driving the growth in income inequality in Canada.”

Among the country’s highest paid CEOs, taking the top three spots, were executives at Magna International Inc., including founder Frank Stronach at $61.8 million, co-CEO Donald Walker at $16.7 million and former co-CEO Siegfried Wolf at $16.5 million.

Only one woman made the list. Nancy Southern, who heads Calgary-based Atco Ltd. and Canadian Utilities Ltd., ranked 85th with a total compensation package worth nearly $4.8 million.

Meanwhile, for average Canadians, taking into account inflation, weekly earnings are now lower than they were during the depths of the 2008/09 recession, the report says.

“Canadians are feeling the squeeze of shrinking disposable incomes, a rising cost of living and record-high household debt,” the report says.

Reality is even harsher for Canada’s minimum wage workers. If they were lucky enough to have a full-time job, they earned on average $19,798 in 2010, the report says.

“What the data say loud and clear is that Canada’s CEO Elite 100 have left the rest of us behind in their gold dust. Those with incomes in the stratosphere no longer live in the world occupied by the rest of us. They live on another planet, in a world largely created by them, that few of us would recognize if we stumbled into it,” the report says.

Until recently, income equality was improving. But since 1987, a third of all income gains went to the richest 1 per cent of Canadians, reversing a 30-year trend toward greater equality.

Canada’s highest-paid CEOs now earn 189 times the average wage, up from 105 times in 1998 and 85 times in 1995.

The report blames the cozy club that makes up Canada’s executive ranks. Many chief executives sit on each other’s boards as directors and are involved in determining each other’s pay, the report says.

“You’re on the board because your buddy, the CEO, recommended you. Are you going to say we should cut this guy’s pay in half? No,” Mackenzie said in an interview.

One of the biggest problems with executive pay is the rampant use of stock options as part of the package, the report concludes.

Ninety per cent of the top 100 CEOs have received such options, which allow them to profit from a future rise in the company’s share price under their watch.

Options result in those executives receiving potentially huge future sums, partly at other taxpayers’ expense as options are taxed more favourably than other forms of earned income, the report also notes.

The value of such options had reached $2 billion last year, or $26 million per CEO, the report says. The tax break on such options could amount to $475 million.

The report recommends eliminating the tax break for stock options.

Roger Martin, Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, goes a step further and says stock options should be eliminated altogether as part of executives’ compensation.

Instead, executive pay should be based on real corporate performance, such as profits and sales.

“While these proposals might seem draconian, they are absolutely necessary to save corporations from themselves,” the report says, quoting from an analysis by Martin.

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